MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Belize

Riding the Hummingbird Highway by motorcycle means covering what Belize's own tourism board calls the most scenic road in the country: 86 kilometers of pavement linking Belmopan, the administrative capital, with Dangriga on the Caribbean coast.

The current route largely follows the old Stann Creek Railway line, which hauled citrus from the valley to the port until the mid-20th century, and it was first paved only in 1994.

Along the way, the pavement winds beneath the Maya Mountains, passes the limestone caves of St. Herman's Blue Hole National Park, and then drops through orange and grapefruit groves down to the coast.

Entering the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve by motorcycle via the Chiquibul Road means a sudden shift in Belize's geology: 106,352 acres (430 km2) declared a forest reserve in 1944, the country's oldest, sitting on a granite base that breaks with the limestone dominating the rest of the territory.

That granite base is why Rio On's turquoise pools and Big Rock Falls exist, along with the mouth of the Rio Frio cave, Belize's largest freely accessible cave.

The terrain runs from 120 meters over the Macal River up to 1,017 meters at Baldy Beacon, so a single ride crosses from pine savanna to rainforest and back.

Reaching Caracol by motorcycle means crossing 85km of Chiquibul jungle on a road one rider bluntly described as nicely formed gravel and firm dirt that later turns narrow, with deep ruts, and becomes pure mud the moment it rains.

The payoff at the end is Caana, "the place of the sky" in Maya, a 43-meter pyramid that remains the tallest man-made structure in all of Belize today, more than a thousand years after its last stone was set. At its height, Caracol rivaled Tikal in size and political power, less than 50km away across the Guatemalan border.

There is a mandatory military checkpoint along the way, a legacy of bandit activity from Guatemala in the area, where every rider must sign in before 1 pm, and the park itself requires all visitors to leave before 3 pm.

The George Price Highway by motorcycle, formerly the Western Highway, is the only land crossing between Belize and Guatemala: 124 kilometers of pavement built in the 1930s that today link Belize City with the Benque Viejo del Carmen–Melchor de Mencos border crossing, the gateway to Tikal.

It is, by far, the busiest route in the country, the one every rider entering or leaving Belize overland toward the rest of Central America takes, and in 2012 it was renamed in honor of George Price, the prime minister who led Belize to independence in 1981.

Along the way it passes through Hattieville, runs by the Belize Zoo, crosses Belmopan, the capital built from scratch after Hurricane Hattie leveled Belize City in 1961, and reaches San Ignacio, the mandatory base before the crossing.

The Southern Highway by motorcycle, now renamed the Thomas Vincent Ramos Highway in honor of the founder of Garifuna Settlement Day, runs 158 kilometers between Dangriga and Punta Gorda and was only fully paved in 2011, after decades as the roughest highway in the country.

It is the backbone of southern Belize: from it branch the turnoffs to Hopkins, the Garifuna village of Maya Center (gateway to the jaguar reserve), the Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun Maya ruins, and the Placencia peninsula.

The final stretch toward Toledo, Belize's most isolated and least-visited district, crosses cacao plantations and Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya villages that keep their language and farming traditions largely intact.

The Coastal Highway by motorcycle, known locally simply as "the Shortcut," cuts about 47 kilometers off the trip between Belize City and Dangriga compared with the long way around via Belmopan and the Hummingbird Highway.

For decades it was one of the most feared routes among overlanders in the region: a dirt and gravel road, deeply rutted, that turned impassable with every rain and took just as long as the longer route despite being much shorter.

That changed between 2020 and 2024, when a roughly BZ$158 million project, funded by the Caribbean Development Bank and the UK, transformed it into smooth pavement with new bridges: the legendary route among overlanders suddenly became one of the country's most comfortable ones.

Riding down the Placencia Road by motorcycle means covering one of the narrowest peninsulas in the Caribbean: about 30 kilometers long from north to south, but barely 800 meters wide at its widest point, with a mangrove lagoon on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other.

The pavement connects the Southern Highway junction with Seine Bight, a Garifuna village, and Maya Beach before ending in Placencia Village, a former fishing town that became one of Belize's most sought-after beach destinations without losing its sand-street scale.

It is the obligatory finish of any loop through southern Belize: the Hummingbird and Southern Highways get you to the junction, and this is the last ramp down to the sea.

The Philip Goldson Highway by motorcycle is Belize's northern gateway: 153 kilometers of pavement between Belize City and the Santa Elena border crossing, opposite Subteniente López on the Mexican side of Quintana Roo.

It is the route every rider coming down from the Riviera Maya or Chetumal toward Central America takes, and the one that connects to the turnoffs for the Altun Ha and Lamanai Maya ruins and to Orange Walk Town, the heart of the country's sugar industry.

It carries the name of Philip Goldson, a journalist and independence-movement politician who was jailed during the fight for Belize's sovereignty against Guatemala, decades before independence in 1981.

Riding the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary by motorcycle, the 10 kilometers of dirt separating the Garifuna village of Maya Center from the reserve, means reaching the world's first jaguar reserve, declared in 1986 after biologist Alan Rabinowitz convinced the Belizean government to protect the area.

It is 353 km2 of jungle home to all five of Central America's wild cat species, though actually seeing a jaguar remains nearly impossible: most riders who make it out here settle for the paw prints in the mud on the road.

Access is run by the Maya Center women's cooperative, which sells tickets in the village itself before the road turns technical.

The Old Northern Highway by motorcycle is the single-lane road that splits off the Philip Goldson Highway at Sand Hill and runs parallel to the coast to Altun Ha, a Maya ceremonial center occupied from 200 BC to 900 AD.

It is the same road where, in 1968, archaeologists found the largest jadeite carving ever discovered in Maya territory: the head of Kinich Ahau, the sun god, carved from a single block of green stone.

Halfway along, a turnoff toward Bermudian Landing leads to the Community Baboon Sanctuary, a community-run reserve created in 1985 to protect the black howler monkey without pushing local farmers off their land, one of Central America's earliest community conservation models.